Metaphor is an image that suggests something else.For instance if i said you are a nut.I am not suggesting that I think that person is literally a nut.Nut is a metaphor.

The Reference of the metaphor in religious tradition is to something transcendent that is not literally any thing.
when you call your friend by the name lion.
It doesn’t mean he is a lion.

If you think that metaphors is itself the reference, it would be like going to a restaurant, asking for the menu,seeing beefsteak written there,and starting to eat the menu.

Do Jesus turn water into wine.
means.
Life is not worthy for you, Jesus makes it worthy for you by correction of perspective.

another one example

As you know all,Jesus ascended to heaven.That is a metaphorical way of saying something that is transcendent.

If we read it with its literal meaning. We lose its true meaning.

“Jesus ascended to heaven”
it seems that Jesus ascended to the sky.
Now we practically go to the galaxy even the speed of light,a million year takes to reach there .there is no such place in the universe.
It is not a denotation ,it’s a connotation.
Jesus has gone inward not into outer space.but you can’t say something which is not available physically in space time.
The metaphor performed their function of speaking to those deep levels of human beings when they arise freshly from the contemporary of experience .

“All things are metaphors.”_Goethe

Everything that’s transitory is but a metaphorical reference.That is what we all are.

what we want,what we believe, what we think we can do ,everything we know ablout ourself is ego.
The universal Self becomes devided immediately after conceiving and uttering the pronounc “I”. (sanskrit-aham).This illustrates the fundamental indian conviction that a sense of ego is the root of the world illusion.

Ego generates the fear and desire.

Look every thing without any name without its uses without any perception you have.

You will see eternity in everything.
Eg.

Just take anything.

A cup of tea.

make a circle around the cup.
what is this ?
without name without any uses.
is it water?
is it hydrogen?
is it particles?

is it wave?
is it both?
or we don’t know.
we know nothing about anything you see.
everything is eternal.
nothing is temporal.
just go through,paston,don’t stuck on anything.

that’s why jesus said,

Take any thing ,yiu will find me there.

Life is sarrowfull.there is no option to escape.only you should participate joyfully.
Buddha..

thats why Lord jesus get crucified affirmatively.

When you got the perspective of jesus or Buddha.
Life with all its illness,all with its cruality,all its suffering with all its losses is lotus golden world.

In Buddhism, the central thought is compassion without attachments.

Kingdom of god is within you.as
Lord. christ is within you.
What he means was that you must live not in terms your own ego system, your own desires, but in terms of what of you might call the sense of mankind-the Christ-in you. There is a Hindu saying, “None but a god can worship a god.” You have to identify yourself in some measure with whatever spiritual principle your god represents to you in order to worship him properly and live according to his word.

what it means.
when you feel,this world is no more worth for you.

It started with the sin.

Initially there is no time,and in garden god deployed adam(created by god) and Eve(created by adam as he is getting bored) living in garden ,and they don’t know duality,they don’t know male and famale,they don’t know right and wrong.
Initially they are just a creatures.One evening a snake seduced to Eve to eat apple.Eve deny but she encourage to adam and eventually he ate the apple.

Apple 🍎: symbol of the knowledge of pair of opposite.
and they realised they are different.
the man and women cover their shame.

They are getting introduced with all opositions.
Day- night
Human and god.good and evil etc.

when something good happens to you .you injoy it.
but when something bad happens to you .you crying.and you losses your eternity.
thats it.

When you are not being centered on your own being.means grace of god pouring on earth.but you are off the beam.you never get it.
अपने नाम से जीतकर भी, मैं गम ही था.

तेरे नाम से हारकर भी, मुस्कुराता रहता हूँ|